Smooth Sailing > Crash > Never could reopen

On Ubuntu 64 bit 4.2.0-35-lowlatency kernel, I was using the package "Vivaldi-Stable" from Vivaldi.com with no issues for a few days. One day, the app and OS crashed and upon resetting the computer I could not get Vivaldi to reopen. The Processes would show in top and htop but nothing would show. I also tried to uninstall and reinstall but no luck. Any other recommendations?

same issue here. running 64 bit ubuntu unity trusty. worked for a few days, now nothing. always crashes on opening.
tried it on my 32 bit lubuntu lexde trusty, but it never even worked. went straight to crashing on opening.

Question to you both… aside from removing & fresh-installing Vivaldi itself via its Deb, have you actually specifically tried starting with a fresh / clean Profile? Ie, have you either deleted /home/steffie/.config/vivaldi-snapshot/Default/ [well, not the steffie bit, of course, but your own names], or [probably preferred] temporarily renamed your Profile (eg, to "Default-Original" or something]?

In this way, your next start of V will create a brand new "clean" profile… & if V itself still refuses to start at that point, then presumably you've at least proven that it's something external to V in your distros that is the culprit. I've never needed to do this [& to be honest i'm unsure if it would help you], but maybe also then consider deleting /home/steffie/.cache/vivaldi-snapshot/ , &/or clearing /tmp/ [eg, via [i]sudo rm -rf /tmp/* – probably safest to then reboot, else your system might get a bit unstable]?

Conversely of course if with a clean profile V does now start, then you know your system crash corrupted the profile… thereafter it's your choice as to whether your hitherto tabs, settings, extensions, bookmarks, passwords etc are valuable enough to you to justify your time & effort needed to forensically troubleshoot the bad profile to isolate the specific culprit.

I had only tried everything I stated in my original post. After reading your response, I deleted the entire /home/*/.config/vivaldi/ folder and I was able to reinstall and open it just fine. I'm using Vivaldi-stable in the Ubuntu store, which I'm guessing may be the reason I don't have the "vivaldi-snapshot" directory instead. Should I be using a different package?

Linux recognizes snapshots and beta/stable as entirely different products. If you download a snapshot, you can have both at the same time, and they will be updated from their respective repos with system updates. Whether you should use one or the other is entirely dependent on your preferences and your tolerance for risk. Snapshots are generally quite stable. I use them almost exclusively. However, progress is pretty fast and they may change fairly rapidly, and bugs will come and go from week to week. With Stable, you always know how it will behave from one day to the next.

In the past, some have been. At this stage of development, the changes from one snapshot to the next can be so significant that if you are using a "stable" version several weeks old, you can actually be at a disadvantage. That said, a very few snapshots have been almost unusable. There was at least one that had such dire crashing reports that I literally never installed it. Another, I rolled back from after trying unsuccessfully to do my daily work with it. On the whole, however, I have been very happy staying on the bleeding edge and getting all the newest features and fixes.

Go to the Team blog https://vivaldi.net/ and read the new features and changelog on the snapshot that was released the week after the stable, and judge for yourself.

I'll try the snapshot and see if I have the same issue after a few days. This is the first time I've had the options of a snapshot versus stable. How would I "roll back" if I had issues with the snapshot? Or does that simply mean removing the snapshot and using only the stable?

How would I "roll back" if I had issues with the snapshot? Or does that simply mean removing the snapshot and using only the stable?

Exactly. Or since vivaldi-stabe and vivaldi-snapshot are different programs, you could just stop using V-snapshot and use V-stable instead, so you still get notified by your package manager when V-snapshot gets updates.

With respect to the problem of re-opening V, do you remember which tabs were open in your last browsing session? There was a bug previously that prevented vivaldi from opening if it was closed with a tab that was open on a PDF file (with the javascript PDF reader). Maybe you had some fancy tabs like that as well?

I do not remember. I always have ~10 tabs open during the workday. That's an interesting bug to be aware of, though. Are there any others I should be aware of while I'm browsing Vivaldi-Snapshot? I got quite a few buddies on another site awaiting my thoughts on Vivaldi. Thanks in advance.

I'll try the snapshot and see if I have the same issue after a few days. This is the first time I've had the options of a snapshot versus stable. How would I "roll back" if I had issues with the snapshot? Or does that simply mean removing the snapshot and using only the stable?

In my case, "roll back" meant to uninstall the newer snapshot and reinstall the prior one. In some cases, if a newer snapshot changes the structure of the user data folder, one might have to rename that folder and then move its data into the one that gets installed with the older snapshot.

Regarding that relatively recent PDF tab bug [albeit now already several SS's & some months ago], that certainly was a major pain in the backside… it bit me [& many others i think] hard. It's been fixed for a while now [AFAIK, unless it's returned recently], but if you're interested to compare my self-notes i wrote at the time i was troubleshooting it, to your recent symptoms, you might see similarities to your recent hassle?

"Every time i left this PDF tab amongst all my other open tabs, then closed V, the next V SU would manifest the bastard symptoms, ie, abort & SD again, thence upon next SU all tabs had vanished. Conversely once i eventually deduced this tab was the trigger, & closed it, then closed V, i found that the subsequent SUs were good… & this is despite a very large number of other tabs in my session".

But if a new snapshot package is released while I'm using vivaldi-snapshot, it will simply update from the repos, right? I don't have to worry about uninstalling the current app and downloading another package, would I ?

Yes, all be done by the Linux updater from repos. Final (=Stable), Beta and Snapshot are separate update streams.
A older Snapshot will be updated with a new Snapshot, older Final with new Final.
So you get the correct ones.

I totally forogt about vivaldi until the ubuntu update manger (no idea, what's its name) updated vivaldi. This was very suprising to me. Now it works again. Still have to check on my lubuntu machine.

As to the question what I tried. I tried nothing. I'm lazy. There are other browsers that work and since it was crashing on two different machines in two different systems I attributed the problem to something out of my power, which maybe it was, since it is running smooth again since the update. I locked it to the launcher bar again, so I can keep testing it

edit: and my last session before crashing was facebook in my only open tab on both machines.